I Was An Alien Cat Toy (30 page)

“Finished?”

“Yes. Tired. Need bath.”

“Yes. Me too. Big bath or little bath?”

“Little. Big bath too much.” Gredar had taken him to the family bath rooms a couple of times, but the

steam was a lot more than he could handle, and though he loved the luxury of the huge pool, he found

sharing it with a dozen or more gigantic day-neh just a little intimidating. And tiring because they all wanted

him to talk about human culture and the colonists, which was a depressing topic at the best of times, and

worse when he was stark naked.

“Okay.”

“Karwa want you. Say you go to hunt with him? Is true?”

He glanced up at Gredar, who flicked an ear. “Maybe,” he said, sounding cautious. “You be angry?”

“Me? No. You want me to come? Karwa wants me to come.”

“Oh. You? Will be fun. Is not long hunt. Two, three sun passes. We take keriv. You be safe.”

Temin listened carefully and assessed Gredar’s tail and ears. The big guy was kinda hoping he’d go,

but he was trying not to push. “Sure. Why not? Yes, I’ll go,” he clarified, seeing Gredar’s confusion.

“When?”

“Six sun passes? Okay?”

“Okay. You protect me, yes?”

Gredar squeezed his shoulder and wrapped his tail around Temin’s waist. “Yes, of course. Work hard,

then hunt, yes?”

“Okay.”

The talk at supper was of all the successful impregnations that had followed the visit of a group of

males two months before. Wilna was one of the females now carrying eggs, to general delight since she’d

been unlucky for some time in her efforts to get pregnant again. She would lay within the next month, and

then the eggs would be brooded for another five, the entire family helping out. Her mother was particularly

pleased because the kits would be born before winter, which reduced the risk. Everyone had to pat Wilna’s

tummy to congratulate her, and Temin didn’t escape, to her amusement.

“You like kits, T’meen? Want to help?”

“Me? No way—day-neh kits too big for me!”

She laughed but it was true. At a month old, they weighed as much as a five-year-old human, and

J’len’s two youngest were nearly as tall as he was, or would be when they started to walk upright. He could

just about lift one, and had learned the hard way that infant day-neh had fully working claws—but not fully

working reflexes to control them. He had acquired some new scars in the last five months. “Is happy to see

your kits. Is good,” he said, stroking the slight roundness.

“What human kits like, hmmm?”

So that meant he had to spend the meal explaining about human birth and reproduction, not a topic on

which he was an expert, but the day-neh found it fascinating. The live birth thing totally freaked them out,

and when he explained the babies basically lived in a sack of water for nine months, he suspected a few of

them flat out disbelieved him. “It’s true,” he insisted.

“Kitling die,” J’len said. “Deeerown?” She said the Standard word again—she had something of an

obsession with human medical terms.

“No, they don’t drown. Kitling breathe water inside.”

“Is joke?”

“No, is true. Honest. Water goes and kitling is born.”

“The water go where?”

“Um.” He waved his hands at his crotch. “Just...out. From taeng.”

“Yuck,” Halit’s son, Edir, said, as several of the listeners winced. Gredar actually crossed his legs.

“Yeah. It’s pretty yuck. But no fur—clean up fast, see?”

And that meant having to explain how the babies didn’t die of the cold, when the mothers had no fur

either. The conversation moved on to Temin’s attempts to make clothing for himself out of the available

materials, and before he knew it, he’d spent fours hours talking to them and it was getting close to midnight.

Too late for a bath, he thought regretfully. Gredar would wipe him down, of course. Hmmm...so not all bad,

then. Wipe downs with tongue and leather were fun for all concerned.

It occurred to him as he was drowsing, lying on top of Gredar after sex, that he could have recorded

the conversation that evening for Martek, but Martek was hogging the handheld and Temin didn’t have

another. It would take years for Martek and Jaijair and their new assistant, Walka, to go through even a tiny

amount of the data on the device, even at the speed Martek was learning Standard. Maybe human

reproduction was a pretty low priority compared with all the technological information they could get from

the records.

Gredar licked his face and cuddled him tighter. “Sleep,” he rumbled. “You’re tired. I’m tired.”

“Too much thinking.”

“You always thinking too much.” He cupped Temin’s buttocks and rubbed one of his long fingers

between them. Temin sighed and spread his legs—he didn’t really want to go another round, but he just liked

the way Gredar touched him, the feel of half-furred hands on him. “You happy?”

“Yes.” Right there and then it was true. He was safe and warm and with someone he cared for a lot. It

wasn’t the same as being home and being with Jeng, but it could have been so much worse. “You?”

“Yes. Very happy. Is good that you come here. Good for me, good for family.” He slowly licked

Temin’s face again, teasing the sensitive place below his ear. “Is happy.”

“Good. Sleep now, big guy.”

The languid licking continued as Gredar began to purr, and Temin burrowed contently into his thick-

furred chest.
Yes. Things could be much, much worse.

~~~~~~~~

Surprised as he had been by T’meen’s agreeing to come on the hunt, Gredar was also delighted. He’d

felt for some time that his friend hadn’t seen the best of Ptane, cooped up in the house or the workshop, and

he wanted to show him more. Karwa’s excitement about getting out on the trail of big game was infectious,

even to a daiyne of Gredar’s age, and he found it a little hard to concentrate on his work those final days

before they left. Everyone was more cheerful with the warm weather, and Wilna’s pregnancy was putting

smiles on faces again after the long mourning over Halit. It had been a trying snow season, but the rebellion

hadn’t resurfaced, T’meen’s existence had ceased to be remarkable, and life was settling into its usual

peaceful rhythm.

Martek was still worked up about the wondrous things T’meen’s strange machine was revealing to

him, but Gredar felt this was a project for the long term. If the huu-man had not come in numbers in three

hundred cycles, it was unlikely they would come at all. If they had not bothered to rescue T’meen, or were

unable to, they were probably not a threat to be too concerned about. He regretted they had not come for

T’meen’s sake, but for his own, he didn’t regret they’d abandoned their friend. T’meen was appreciated and

wanted here, and would have a home so long as Gredar’s family held control of this clan. Wilna’s pregnancy

would secure that control still further, and with Filwui and his conspirators dead, the only serious threat his

mother’s authority had ever faced was gone.

So now it was time for a little relaxation, and loosing of the reins of responsibility. Karwa, the male

most likely to step into Gredar’s place when he was too old and infirm to be of any use, was still a little

young to be responsible, and was still getting the need to hunt out of his system before he settled down.

Gredar had been the same, though he’d found himself the senior male when he was not a lot older than

Karwa was now. He was proud of the work he’d done for the clan in the pottery—but when the sun was

shining, and the air was clean, the wind from the mountains crisp and scented with the pollen of food trees

that attracted the finest prey, it was hard to be inside and tend to kiln and clay. For the next couple of days, he

wouldn’t have to.

T’meen was a little apprehensive as Gredar took him around the back of the house where Karwa was

holding the kerivs ready, and Gredar couldn’t blame him. The birds dwarfed T’meen, and they could be testy

creatures. Gredar had arranged for the quietest ones the village beast master could provide, and his mount

stayed calm as he hoisted T’meen up into the double saddle. “You be safe,” he assured his friend.

Temin smiled. “Yes, I know. Let’s go.”

The hunting grounds and lake were well within walking range if they wanted to take all day to get

there, but since Gredar couldn’t afford to take much time away from the pottery so close to a gathering, and it

was possible they might have a load of kizaz meat and skin to bring back, he thought it wiser to take mounts.

Besides, Karwa loved the kerivs, and Gredar had to admit there was something thrilling about racing at speed

across the plains. T’meen clutched the pommel and held on tightly as they tore across the land, but he smiled

the whole time. When Gredar pulled them up at the lakeside where they would make camp, and lifted

T’meen down, his friend patted the keriv’s stirrup. “Was
fun
. Do again?”

“Yes. Soon.” Karwa grinned at them across his mount’s back. “First, we hunt.”

There was no safe way to take T’meen on the hunt itself—to carry him would be a serious hindrance,

and the risk of injury to his friend was great—so reluctantly Gredar had to leave him at the campsite with a

fire pit ready to light. T’meen had his weapons, and assured Gredar he’d be fine, but it was still a relief to

return mid-afternoon and find him safe. It had been a fine hunt—no kizaz, but they had run down and killed a

good-sized jujor buck. Karwa, bloody-muzzled and coated with dust, stalked back into camp with the buck

around his shoulders and tossed it at T’meen’s feet.

T’meen didn’t move, just lifted an eyebrow. “Is very small,” he said, eyes wide and innocent. “Is

snack?”

“Ha ha, funny huu-man.” Karwa sniffed. “I need a wash, Uncle. Do you think T’meen would like a

swim?”

“Ask him, nephew. I’ll deal with the jujor.” It needed to be butchered—some for their supper, the rest

to act as bait tomorrow when they would hunt kizaz in earnest.

T’meen agreed to go swimming, though only after a lot of teasing from Karwa about how cold the

water would be, the little wretch. Gredar kept only half an eye on their splashing and swimming out on the

lake as he began to cut the jujor up, hanging half the carcass up in a nearby tree, putting some of it on a spit

over the fire which he then set gong, and burying the entrails in case it attracted pests which would spoil their

sleep.

~~~~~~~~

Karwa tossed Temin a drying leather as he walked out of the icy water—sheft it was cold, but so

clean and good after months and months stuck in the village, mostly indoors. The young day-neh walked

over as Temin was wiping himself down. “You cold? Come to fire. Have fur for you.”

He let Karwa coddle him a little and fuss around. Strange that if it hadn’t been for Karwa and his love

of hunting, Temin would never have met the day-neh at all, and would probably now be dead of starvation

and cold. Gredar tended the fire and poking the spitted meat, which smelled delicious. Temin had never seen

a freshly dead animal intended for his supper before he’d crashed on this planet, and if he’d been asked if he

could kill and eat something he’d seen alive, he’d have said ‘no way’. Now he was perfectly happy at the

prospect of eating roast meat while half the previous owner was hanging gutted up in a tree over their heads.

As they digested their meal, Temin snuggled up against Gredar’s smoke-scented fur as Karwa

wrapped his tail around his hands to warm them. “I love you guys, you know that?”

Gredar made a little chirrup of enquiry. “Okay? Is happy?”

“I’m very happy, big guy. You two are the best.”

Karwa chuckled. “Best day-neh, Uncle. You tell Grandmother, yes?”

“Maybe. T’meen is best huu-man on Ptane, yes?”

Karwa pretended to think. “Hmmm—maybe.” Temin poked him in the leg and made out he was

sulking. Karwa thought that was funny too.

Perhaps out of sensitivity to Karwa’s presence, Gredar didn’t make any moves on him that night, but

it was okay. Temin liked to cuddle too, and no mattress in the galaxy was as soft or warm as two day-neh

bodies. Karwa wrapped himself around his uncle like the kid Temin still thought of him as, and Gredar put

his arms around the both of them. Temin slept like the dead all the way through to morning, and thought this

camping thing wasn’t too bad, all in all.

His friends were going to make another attempt to catch a kizaz the next day. Day-neh were the only

real predators of these creatures which sounded more like the dragons of old Terran myth than anything else.

Gredar explained that unless they were hunted periodically, they became a serious nuisance, not to mention a

danger to the resident clans. Karwa had wanted to kill one since he was old enough to talk. And apparently,

back in the day, Gredar—sedate, responsible, kind Gredar—was considered one of their best and most

ruthless hunters. It was kind of scary, actually, to watch him preparing to go out that morning, the haunch of

bloodied meat over one shoulder, and see him slip back into that role—like it was to see him in his very rare

losses of control and temper. The veneer of civilisation fell away, leaving someone who really was alien to

Temin’s eyes, not just an overgrown cat.

But then he turned and smiled, and batted Temin with his big fluffy tail, and he was just Gredar,

Temin’s lover and friend again. “Is gone all day. You be careful.”